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Lot Essay

Durable, easy to clean, resistant to both fire and water, marble-inset tops provided protection to surfaces from daily activities such as the burning of incense or pouring of wine. Portable examples, such as the present stand, would have been easily transported from the garden to the scholar's studio and would have been essential to everyday life. An eighteenth-century illustration from the novel Jin Ping Mei, shows a square marble-inset stand similar to the present example supporting the "Three Friends of Incense"(the incense tool vase, incense burner, and incense powder box).